Friday, August 11, 2017

Fishing Report for Wheeler/Ditto Landing 8/10/2017

It took 2 months, but we finally figured something out. No one said we were the smartest guys in the world, but as Josh and I discussed our plans leading up to the Thursday night wildcat, we both came up with the same idea at the same time. The one spot we have both caught fish every time we have fished. What's funny is that each time we have fished this spot, just a few football fields from the mouth of Ditto, has been when we had largely given up.

Each time we fished it, we gave it a little more time than the last. In fact, after weeks and weeks of being unable to catch a limit, we bagged and weighed our first one off of this spot.You can read about our last few trips here:

So, when everyone blasted off, heading to the dam or wherever, we dropped the trolling motor and started casting. We weren't the only people who had this thought and just ahead of us was another boat who landed a keeper on the very first cast.

It didn't take us long to get on the board, either. Josh bagged spots off of a Strike King plug, but none measured. I was able to get a keeper in the boat on a PTL Bull Nose Jig with a Craw D trailer. Next cast, another one. Next cast, another fish. The problem was, few of these fish measured and those that did weren't big enough to matter.

Eventually Josh caught a decent fish on a crank and minutes later, I fought a three pound spot to the boat. Then disaster stuck. As Josh dunked the net, the fish made a last second jump and threw the jig, something fairly uncommon.

All we could do was go back to fishing. That is until I set the hook on a fish and snapped about a foot off of my jig rod.

After swapping lures for awhile, catching ones and twos on a Strike King crank, I picked the jig back up and went back to catching fish.

The key was an extending point of underwater rip-rap. These fish were right on the break down to 18 feet.

After catching 20 in the first hour, we had a new issue arise. What looked like a dad and his two sons came down from the parking lot to bank fish. Mind you, the spot we were catching fish upon was tiny, despite fishing a long, long stretch of rip-rap that was accessible to the bank fishermen. Yet, even as Josh fought the 40,000 CFS current, they guys stepped even with the boat and proceeded to cast five different bottom bouncers. Some were behind the boat and some were ahead and even one right at us.

Initially, we asked where they wanted to fish so we could position ourselves to accommodate them. Either they couldn't understand us, or they didn't care. Try as we might, we hung their lines over and over. We politely asked them not to cast at both the front and the back, but to pick one. They didn't comply.

It became a losing situation and we decided to move. We did find fish at every spot we stopped at that was similar to our initial spot, but nothing like the bite after bite.

We tried to return to the spot, but the bank fishermen were still on the spot and we left them along.

We were surprised to find that our 6.80 was good enough for 3rd place. Of course, we also found out that the three pounder we lost would have put us in 2nd. And, we had to wonder if we could have beat the 10 pound sack had we been able to fish the spot all night.

It was our best day on the river this summer that resulted in around 20 fish, none of them over two pounds. Still, it was a lot of fun, though it did cost me a rod and Josh 4 Strike King cranks. The water was very stained and this current should make any current break money.